Eva Hadad
I was born in Michigan but have lived
in many other states along my journey to finally
settling in Colorado. From high school in New Mexico,
I decided to follow a passion for photography to New
York to attend college at the Rochester Institute of
Technology (RIT) where I met my husband standing in
line to get our ID’s on the very first day!
During my first year at RIT I began working at the day care on campus and quickly realized I was not nearly as interested in attending my classes as I was excited to go visit “my kids” at work. So the following year I changed my major to childhood education and transferred schools to the State University of New York in Fredonia where I completed my Childhood Education degree with a concentration in mathematics and a minor in photography.
After graduation, my now husband and I, decided to move back to his home state of Colorado where I began teaching 8th grade math at Mrachek Middle School for Aurora Public Schools. During my first year I also attended Regis University to complete my Masters degree in curriculum, instruction, and assessment. This was when I first learned about the EL model and became very interested in the philosophy of expeditionary learning. I designed my course work and thesis project around expeditionary learning, as I knew I wanted to ultimately end up teaching in an EL school. I have now taught for a total of four years at Mrachek Middle School, each year taking on new roles both instructionally and within the school culture. I have taught advanced classes as well as special education classes in both the 7th and 8th grades. I also coached the swimming and soccer teams each year I was there. In my fourth year I took on the role of “Math Teacher Leader” in which I acted as a building coach for all the mathematics instruction in our building as well as having a demonstration math classroom. Starting at Odyssey this year has already been a great learning experience for me to grow as a teacher and I am looking forward to an exciting year.